Mittens Are for Estonians

Rasha is effin’ cold. Plus, there are plenty of other things to worry about (maintaining nation’s birthrate, getting a table at Rai, not being eaten by bears.) For these reasons, little sway is given to the concerns of Western animal rights activists.


The annual “Fire & Ice” fashion event shows “what’s up” in the world of fur and leather. I’m posting photos from last year’s event because they’re much more fantastische. Also because I remembered seeing them back then and feeling a peculiar swell of emotion then ultimately resulted in the creation of this blog.

Nothing comes between me and my mink flapper dress.

Screw You, PETA.

Of course, you have to come to “Ice & Fire” swinging your biggest fur accessories.


But if you really want to know what captured my heart, and sent me down the path to Moscow nightlife anthropology blogging, it was the fellow above. He had me at jewel-encrusted eye-patch.

Photos: elite.ru

FAQ You, FAQ You, You’re Cool, FAQ You, I’m Out

There was I time I hated myself for being so poor I had to hang out at FAQ Cafe, a D.I.Y. bohemian place which looks ready to cave in on itself at any moment. Then I learned to stop worrying and love the arty, free-spirit-or-else of it all, because at least it’s not as bad as the rest of the club scene.

Or is it?

OR IS IT?


It all brings back bad memories of being in high school, taking Basic Photography and then showing it to people and writing poetry and then showing it to people. Plus, even if they’re hippie lesbians, the girls at FAQ still get nakey on the bar after two cocktails, which undermines everything, I think.

ArteFAQ, FAQ’s sophomore project, opened this summer on the other side of Tverskaya and is way more sophisticated. While FAQ Café is still getting scrounging money for shots of bathtub vodka, ArteFAQ enjoys imported beer and is writing a PhD dissertation on how to food is performed in the Soviet experience. If I don’t meet my husband in a bookstore poetically reaching for the same copy of Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish,” like I always imagined since I was a little girl, then it will be at “Gastrololiya,” a series of talks hosted at ArteFAQ about the critical theory of gastronomy.


The décor’s also a big improvement: overflowing bookcases, sundry old photographs, a fire crackling in the fireplace and a homemade Roy Lichtenstein painted on the ground. Basically everything people think academia will be like, before they realize they’ve condemned themselves to a life of poverty.


The best part about peeing there is that there’s a giant, quivering TV eye in one of the stalls.


Photos: faqcafe.ru, artefaq.ru

FAQ Cafe, 9 Gazetny Per., Bldg. 2, Metro: Okhotny Ryad, Tel. 629-0827;
ArteFAQ, 32 Bol. Dmitrovka Ul, Bldg. 1, Metro: Tverskaya, Tel. 650-3971

The Good Ship Probka

Say what you will about Moscow being unkind to women, I've pulled more times at Propaganda's Student Night than any other time/space nexus on the planet. Something about the dreamlike artificial fog, pure techno cacophony, 90-ruble vodka shots and mutually acknowledged desperation of clubbing on a Thursday sends people hurtling into each other like elementary sex particles. The face control goons stopped letting me in ages ago after I threatened to "bury" them, but I'm kind of glad, because now I have my Friday mornings back.

Geometria.ru puts Propaganda into a sparse, new club photo section — "Underground." Now, everyone with a Lonely Planet guide knows about Propaganda, the city's oldest nightclub. But the label still fits because it's physically underground, with an edgy air raid bunker decor. And, it's relatively cheap, the way that Moscow's underground isn't. How riptarded is a $10 well drink, Mr. Simachev? Propaganda is where the real fashion is at: Summer 2007 marks the emergence of Telnyashka Chic.


Photos: Geometria.ru, Englishrussia.com

Propaganda, 7 Bol. Zlatoustinsky Per., Metro: Kitai-Gorod, Tel. 624-5732

The One About Monkeys

The metaphor came to us while drunk — of course we were drunk — then took on a life of its own.

While Moscow's dating scene is a love parade for expat men, it isn't quite as easy to find romance here if you are a monkey on a tricycle. Statistically there are 4 women to every man in Moscow, which makes for a frenetic marketplace of love that can intimidate even the most dated of the dated. So how does a monkey on a tricycle rise above, beat the odds and find romance in such a competitive environment? It’s easy to become discouraged when you realise that while you may have been a star back home, a monkey on a tricycle is a curious and perplexing alien to Muscovites, rather like expat girls. The important thing is to try not to be discouraged by the fact that you are one of only a handful of monkeys on tricycles in Moscow. Don't feel isolated -celebrate your uniqueness! Recognise your unique selling point and use it to your advantage. Be mindful though, that while it's great to stand out in a crowd, the fact that you are a monkey on a tricycle already makes a sort of spectacle of you. There is no need to draw further attention to your exclusivity by, say socialising only with other monkeys on tricycles. One monkey on a tricycle is intimidating enough to most Muscovites, let alone a handful of tipsy monkeys on tricycles looking for love. You can stand out but fit in at the same time. Make a diverse group of friends and widen your circle. By not making the effort to fit in you may exclusive yourself right out of the market. You may be Prada, but a walk past their store will show you how quiet it is in there. And look at the roaring trade Terranova boasts! Don't think of it as lowering your standards — you're just changing them. As the saying goes, when in Rome, dress like a $2 tart, drink a lot more and more often and accept attention wherever you can get it, even if it’s the Tajik cab driver who offered to take you to his brother’s kiosk for dinner. If all this sounds like too much effort, just take the matter into your own hands and really own your celibacy. Remind yourself every day that you came to Moscow to become the best monkey on a tricycle you could be, and that relationships would just distract you from this. There are plenty of other things to do besides “it” in Moscow. Like museums, and stuff.

Summerfolk (or There Goes the Neighborhood)

You bet it gets hot in Moscow in the summer: 36 degrees today and climbing. In times like these, poor people take a dip in the Moskva, rich people drive to their dachas and very rich people drive to their dachas in Zhukovka, 10 km outside the city center on the Rublyevo-Uspenskoye highway. In this village's elite settlements, new cottages start at $1 million, with things like helicopters thrown in to sweeten the package. These gated communities bear spacestation names — Zhukovka-3, Gorky-22 — or else evoke faraway American suburbia: Green Hill, Apple Garden, etc.


Subbing birches for beaches, Zhukovka is Moscow's Hamptons, a pretty place soured by urban vs. townie, richy vs. poory tension. A long time ago, Tsar Aleksei decreed that no industry shall ruin Zhukovka's natural beauty, making it the prime destination for black-lung city dwellers in the years to follow. Standard-issue huts were distributed among the proletariat in the late Soviet era. In the present day, many owners have held onto these and tend chickens in them year-round, despite the creeping onset of very important neighbors. At the neighborhood potluck you'll find the political elite (many members of the State Duma and the FSB (ex-KGB), Ukraine opposition leader Yanukovych), captains of business (Roman Abramovich, Nornikel head and skiing whore-monger Mikhail Prokhorov) and pop singers (Eurovision loser Alsou). Putin's brigade, heading deeper into Rublyovka, chokes the highway twice daily.


Poor people living in huts, rich people complaining of the livestock smell — a class war is a'brewing, if you listen to the old man on the porch in the rocking chair. As demand for luxury housing in the suburbs increases, things are getting nepriyatnie. The Guardian reported in February of mounting land grab "casualties," including the car-bombed Valery Yakovlev, formerly a community property official. The more civil are leaving it at strong suggestions that stubborn people surrender their land titles. The plebes have responded with harshly worded graffiti.


Before the Revolution comes, don't forget to enjoy Veranda u Dachi (Summer Terrace of the Dacha), part of Zhukovka's upperclass retail/dining neighboorhood, which was named the Best Out-of-City resturant by Menu.ru the last two years. The theme is pre-revolutionary country living — owner Arkady Novikov calls the restaurant a love letter to one's own home — but there's no Chekovian idyll. Cozy details like rustic cupboards with marinating cloves are undermined by perversely expensive prices and a degenerately rich clientele. A conservative estimate for dinner (Italian, Japanese, Uzbek and Chinese cuisines) is 70 euros.


The restaurant is attached to Dacha, an art gallery started by collector Yemelyan Zakharov and Sasha Vertinskaya, granddaughter of the ballad singer Alexander Vertinsky and niece of director Nikita Mikhalkov. It sells provincial knickknacks, and hosts haute couture shows like the one below.


The entire point of this article when I sat down to write it, arms sticking to the desk, was that it's now summer veranda season. Moscow is really cold more often than its really hot, so we really care about these things, yo. Veranda u Dachi's patio opened; people went.






Veranda u Dachi, 70 Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, Zhukovka village, Tel. 418-3394, www.artdacha.ru

Photos: readrussia.com, novikovgroup.ru, elite.ru

Turand'OH SHIT

Russia — “Zaire with permafrost?” No, as far as I know, Zaire doesn’t have anything like Turandot.


In an article I’ve lined my bed with and sleep on every night, element’s Franich St. Franich writes, “Alternatively celebrated and scorned when it opened in late December [of 2005], Turandot already carries a mixed reputation as Moscow cuisine’s newest retort to global derision, as well as its latest affront to decency. As always, perhaps most startling are the economics; namely, the $50 million invested in a restaurant, i.e., that particular commercial enterprise in which failure to recoup is virtually guaranteed. This is vanity you can touch.”


Restaurateur Andrei Dellos (Cafe Pushkin, Shinok), called a “neo-classical Walt Disney” by The New York Times, put forth this study in maximalism a year and a half ago. The chinoiserie is supposedly the first of three palatial restaurants of escalating extravagance, with an Italian to come in 2007 and, finally, a Russian-themed one, just before the Apocalypse. It always scares me when they say, “Just wait.” Because Turandot is enough. Too much. Olly, olly oxen-free!


Six years in the making, $50 million invested, 65,000 square feet — these aren’t dim sums. The food is not worth the 18th century replica china its served on, Asian fusion that invokes the restaurant’s namesake, loony Chinese princess Turandot, who is the subject of a Puccini opera. But, whatever — there’s a McDonald’s across the bulvar. Turandot for lookie, not eatie.



element continues, “The restaurant’s interior brilliantly recalls the Orientalist obsessions of Russia’s aristocracy, and if you are warmed by glitter and gold and loathe the disease of tired minimalism, you will be home at last…Ethereal lighting makes you feel like you are richer and perhaps better than God…Attendants wear powdered white wigs, and after some time you too wish you could wear a wig, if only society would understand.”


Marble courtyard. Gilded monkeys. Catherine the Great’s peacock clock on a rotating stage. Porcelain ghzel toliets that no ass should ever touch. Zhenya, get me off this crazy thing!

Turandot, 26/5 Tverskoi Bulvar, Metro: Tverskaya, Tel 739-0011

Photos: nytimes.com, newyorksocialdiary.com, menu.ru

The One About Irony

Playboy Olmeca Club, a promotional party series between Playboy Russia and Olmeca tequila, opened at Bon on March 29. It's not exceptional, not blog-worthy, but Bon is. Last spring, the management team behind unironic, unsubtle club Billionaire -- there was such a thing -- convinced French designer Philippe Starck to design its new, next-door restaurant. Starck, known for tasteful minimalism, turned the place into a freak show with Kalashnikov rifle lamps, taxidermy wearing bling, screaming skulls, mismatched cutlery, indecent frescoes, gold paint splattered on the walls. Also, the food sucks and costs a fortune. But, Moscow punk'd? Moscow called out? Nah.

element wrote:

"Moscow’s is done, admittedly, in the aesthetic of 'rich man with no taste.' Essentially, Bon is New Russian camp. But, if Starck meant to indict Moscow, the joke is on him because the line separating the people enjoying Bon ironically and those enjoying it non-ironically is blurred, or maybe nonexistent."

A. A. Gill disagreed. The irony is so deeply ingrained, it's recognized but not even viewed as a novelty anymore:

"Restaurants in Moscow are hysterically, emphatically, purposefully expensive and gaudy. They’re more gaudy, camp and flash than the Bolshoi Christmas Special. I went to [Bon], designed by Philippe Starck, which had gold Kalashnikov lampstands. If you want the Christmas-cracker wisdom of what the difference is between America and Russia, it’s that America is wholly without irony and Russia is wholly without anything that isn’t an irony. "

Here are people at the series opening: anonymous revelers; Masha Tsigal and her homegirl; socialite Ksenia Sobchak; Bosco di Ciliegi buyer Konstantin Andrikopoulos third; and a man with his fly unizipped. Oh dear, I just relaized that's designer Andrei Sharov. Enjoying Bon ironically or non-ironically? We'll never know.

Bon, 4/4 Yakimanskaya Nab., Metro: Polyanka, Tel. 737-8008

Photos: Starck.com, Mainpeople.ru